by Laer Carroll
“Oh, I’d like that! I could even teach you the basics.”
“I’m too old for that.”
“Hah! You blow away the gorgiest women in the room! ”
Her mother protested but Bethany thought there might be some truth in her joke. Her tall red-haired mother was into her forties but had always kept good care of herself. Plus Beth had secretly given her perfect health. She looked barely 30, if that.
Nicolas had risen and come around the hug his wife one-armed.
“I’m up for it. I even know a little of the Argentine style from France when I was growing up there.”
“Well, we’ll think about it,” said her mother, smiling at him.
Bethany took that to mean No. She regretted it. It would be nice to have more things to share with her mother—and with her step. There was still more distance between the two of them than she liked.
“Well, if you change your mind I’ll be up to giving you a few tips. I’d really love it if you two would come with me some time.
“Now, I’m going to change and take a little walk. I’m still a bit up after the dance.”
She gave her Mother and Nicolas a quick shared hug, sneaking in a quick check of their health.
Shortly she was in sweats and tennies. She let herself out the back and walked into the shadow at the edge of the house.
Burbank fell away below her. To the east a crescent moon was an hour into the midnight sky. A lone wisp of cloud lay across it, luminescent with moonlight.
She rotated to look south. Directly below her the residential area was mostly dark. Downtown Burbank revealed itself as she rose higher. Gold and orange limned the streets and buildings.
Higher she rose. Mountains to the east and west unfolded themselves to her view. A passenger jet slid westward down the night sky above her, another behind it, another before it, like pearls sliding along a string.
She paced the closest one for a time, off to one side. She used her binocular vision to look in on the people inside. She could not get close or the air disturbed by her passage could affect the way the plane flew and endanger it.
Then she peeled off and up and moved further south. The low Hollywood Hills passed below. Los Angeles spread before her, bright with lights in most of it. A slight haze spread over the city. Lines of light marked the streets laid out in checkerboard patterns. Wider lines were freeways snaking through the L. A. basin.
The downtown came flowing toward her. She lowered to a few hundred feet above the highest buildings. Off to one side blinking lights and her own robotic servant heralded a helicopter. She guessed a police copter because of the hour.
For a time she drifted, the city passing slowly under her. Freeway traffic flowed, busy despite the day and late hour.
It was all very peaceful.
·
She slept well that night.
·
When summer came Bethany had more free time. Her family knew from long experience that she was responsible and trustworthy, her mother only reminding her once to remember to carry pepper spray. They and her friends got used to not seeing her for days at a time and she never gave reasons.
Her parents assumed she was with her friends. Her friends ragged her about her secret boyfriend. She just smiled, sending them to heights of speculation, each more ridiculous than before. They eventually tired of it, deciding disgustedly that she was doing something boring and just trying to seem mysterious. Soon they each went on their various summer camps or trips with their parents.
Bethany had gotten the tango bug bad. It was like that for some people, who endlessly took lessons, went to several dances a week, became teachers even, and had most of their friends within the tango crowd.
Some went to Buenos Aires for the “authentic tango experience.” So Bethany did too.
·
She dropped down out of the clouds on a Thursday a couple of hours before sunset. It was winter going on to spring on the “bottom” side of the planet. There was a cloud front passing away to the east into the Atlantic Ocean.
Below she saw what her guide book said was the widest street in the world.
Nueve de Julio street ran north and south. Early on the city had torn up two entire miles of city blocks and put in fourteen lanes of street separated by a green as wide as a two-lane highway. In the center the streets curved around an oval parklet. In the center of the park was a white obelisk like that in Washington, D. C.
To the east across the street from her was a nearly solid wall of tall buildings plastered with neon signs, asleep in the daytime. She saw TWO Burger Barns half a block apart. She also saw an enormously tall luxury Victoria hotel and a block away an Americana hotel nearly as tall.
The streets were wet as she came out of an alley onto 9 de Julio. She trundled behind her two pull-along suit cases and had the strap of a laptop case crossing over her shoulder. She stopped a moment to look about.
Many hundreds of people walked the sidewalks and crossed the streets. Hundreds of cars flowed back and forth along the fourteen streets. Half of them were yellow, cabs.
Bethany turned left to walk half a block closer to El Obelisco. She turned into a narrow hotel sandwiched between two taller ones. Inside it gleamed with granite and subdued gold metal, refurbished just two years ago according to its Web site.
At the check-in desk she spoke in the rudimentary Spanish she’d learned at the milongas and from online Spanish courses.
“Tengo reservación.¿Hay alguienaquí que hableInglés?”
The young woman in blue blazer over a white blouse smiled and said, “I speak English. What is your name?” She had an American accent.
Bethany gave her a credit card and her driver’s license. She’d assumed a face similar to her own but seemingly aged ten years. She’d also let her compressed fat give her a more voluptuous figure. Her hair now gleamed blond and with medium curls which cascaded over one shoulder, a look she’d borrowed from Brigitte.
Soon she had her credit-card sized room key and directions to her room. She took the elevator behind a golden-appearing metal door up to the top floor, Nine. Inside a small but comfortable room was a double bed, a desk, and a TV opposite the bed, atop a dresser.
She hung up her clothes in the clothes press and arranged her toiletries in the bright white bathroom. Everything seemed new, so the Web site seemed to be truthful about the hotel’s recent refurbishing.
She put her laptop on the desk and plugged it into the electrical socket and the InterWeb socket. She powered it on and made sure she could talk over the Web.
Shortly she was in a light blue summer dress and open-toed sandals with a modest heel. Over one shoulder was the strap of a small blue purse. As advised by the State Department tourist Web site the purse was positioned in front to reduce the possibility that a pickpocket would target her. Buenos Aires had few violent threats to tourists, but criminals liked to target tourists for small crimes .
She smiled at the thought of the shock anyone who tried to victimize her would suffer.
For a time she just wandered with the other walkers, immersing herself in the flow. She walked west on the Obelisk cross street Corrientes for a few blocks. Passing a theater advertising a tango show for the next few weeks she bought a ticket for that night.
Reversing, she went back east and crossed 9 de Julio to go one block, then turn south down a smaller street. A half block on she came to a tall old two-story building, La Confiteria Ideal. Her tango friends back home had told her it was a great place to dance in the afternoon and early evening. It was also a good place to pick up flyers for the most recent events, especially classes.
Inside it was like stepping back a century in time. The floors were a honey-colored granite. A half dozen massive pillars seemed to uphold a high ceiling. The lamps hung from the ceiling were archaic. Square tables dotted the floor, each covered with a creamy cloth. A dozen people were scattered around, some drinking tea and nibbling the confections which gave the Confiteria it
s name.
A stair near the outside door led to another high-ceiling room similar to the first. But in the center of the ceiling a long domed skylight let in light. All the tables were pushed back to the edges of the room to leave most of the center free.
There a varied collection of dancers embraced, moving slowly around the line of dance, often also moving around each other like eddies in a pond. Some were quite young: teenagers cutting class? Some were quite old. Most were in-between but tending toward the more mature. They all dressed nicely, though not super-formally.
She bought a ticket from the woman at the table near the stair, selected a table where she could watch. A white-coated waiter took an order for a glass of white wine.
She avoided the gaze of men, knowing that the custom in Argentina was to stare at those with whom you wanted to dance. The ones who stared back were interested. It saved the hurt feelings of men who walked across a room only to be rejected when they asked for a dance.
An hour was enough for her. She gathered a sheaf of flyers on a table near the stairs, folded them in half, and tucked them into her small purse.
The rest of the afternoon she walked, first on the long pedestrians-only street that ran southeast till near the harbor. Near that was the famous red mansion of the president, faded to pink from years and sun. She visited other tourist sites, such as the massive old congressional building which seemed to have not been kept up at all. Its grey exterior had hairline cracks in it and it was weather stained.
The tango show that night was all she could have wanted. Lots of fake drama: gangsters dancing with whores, poor people dancing in the streets, tuxedoed aristocrats with women dressed in slinky floor-length gowns and lots of jewelry and big hats with feathers. The choreography was elaborate and athletic, with lots of leaping and sliding into splits.
Nothing like social tango, seemingly. But she saw underneath it to the basic dance, and the music was all tango, mostly old favorites with one piece adorned by a rock beat in counterpoint with the medium-march beat of the tango.
Afterward she wandered the streets till way past midnight. The pace of the city never seemed to lessen. At 3:00 in the morning they were as crowded as ever. How did they ever get any daily business done?
The next three days she danced at both a “matinee” ( afternoon) milonga and an evening one that began at 11:00 and went till 5:00 in the morning.
She never lacked for partners. They were all ages. She liked the youngest for their creative and energetic styles. The oldest she liked because they seemed to dance to the music, interpreting it, rather than the show-off attempts of the kids.
Several gorgeous men seemed more interested in getting her in bed and perhaps her riches into their banks. One near-gigolo let his hand slide sensuously down her back to the top of her bottom. She enjoyed the action but didn’t say Yes to a second set. Another was a little more forceful, or clumsy. He ended up nursing a sprained wrist, much to the amusement of a couple of friends. She thought he might confront her outside the milonga, but his friends winked at her as they walked him out to a car and stuffed him into it before driving off.
She almost wished he’d tried. With her he’d learn a hard and dangerous lesson. With another woman he might go too far and hurt someone—perhaps himself if he met a woman with pepper spray and a willingness to use her stiletto heels on his intimate anatomy. She’d noticed that Argentine women were very traditionally feminine but were also well into post-wave feminism. They didn’t put up with crap from men.
Monday morning she had a large breakfast at her hotel and checked out, leaving a nice tip for the maids. Then she vanished down an alley.
·
When no place on the planet is further than a half hour Bethany could go anywhere. She danced the tango in San Francisco, New York, and Miami.
To practice her French the shapechanger frequented Montreal where it was the official language. It was a beautiful city in summer. So was Paris. She even began to pick up different French accents, so much so that when she was in Montreal she was taken for French and in Paris for Canadian.
Of course it helped that she could change her features to give her an ethnic look specific to each locale. She got very good at picking up very subtle clues that people used to ID different ethnicities, clues most were not even aware they perceived.
Her wardrobe grew. She had to work more for Miguel and Kendall. He was still trying to keep her in the office, but there were too many lucrative offers from clients who asked for her rather than one of the other girls. She felt a little sorry for the other gofers and sometimes passed on jobs to let them have them.
Then toward the end of summer her life changed again.
Chapter 6 - Rich
Bethany went to bed thinking about the money she’d saved from working for Cardosa & Rossiter Security, the agency which Miguel and Kendall had founded. She had almost enough money to buy a used car. Miguel, who was good with machines, had promised he’d backstop her in her choice and make sure there was nothing wrong with it which couldn’t be cheaply fixed. By one of his relatives who owned an auto shop.
She dreamed she was a man. He was setting up several trust funds in a German bank. Each was to be redeemed by an ancestor. There were seventeen in all.
It was in the mid-1800s and he’d redeem them as needed in the next few decades, but since he was an immortal shapechanger he put no time limit on them. Who knows what century he’d return to them?
She woke and went over the memory-not-a-dream. How was Roberto Rodriguez an ancestor of hers? And had he ever redeemed them? Did the accounts still exist or had the bank (a multinational even then) decided eventually to take the money for their own?
She went into the office early that day. She’d often chatted with Anson Hightower, one of the two electronic security specialists who worked for (and were one-tenth partners) in C&R. He was the friendlier of the two, at least to her, and liked to talk about his work. She enjoyed listening to the details of identity theft and detection. She’d learned a lot from him.
Now she wanted to commit identity fraud herself. And open up one of the trusts. Except she would not be a thief. She really was an ancestor.
Or at least so she could argue if the immortal ever came calling. In fact, she thought as she considered scenarios, she could even leave him a message in whatever account she took for her own. She could tell him to come calling so that she could prove she was of his line and make up for any money she had spent.
She didn’t know how she’d do that. But surely a superhuman could come up with some way.
·
A bike ride to a bus stop and then a ride on the bus with her bike in the bike rack on its front brought her into West Hollywood to the C&R office.
“Hey, Anse. How are you doing?”
A middle-aged man with a piratical mustache and beard wearing a bandana over his hair looked up from a computer screen. He spun the ergonomic chair so he could better look at her.
His looks were deceiving. He could dress and act several kinds of respectable while on “practical” (physical) surveillance.
“Middling. Middling. Better than can be expected. Still got that cough.” He gave a very unconvincing cough. She looked sympathetic.
He acted like a hypochondriac but was in perfect health and knew it. Beth sometimes wondered at the personality dynamics behind that affectation but most of the time played along with it. As now. She nodded sympathetically.
“Well, I’m going to do a little research. Don’t mind me.” She sat down at a vacant computer and brought up a screen.
For the next hour the two worked mostly silently, each on their own projects, which was as usual. It wasn’t that he didn’t care how she was doing. He simply was engaged in his own project.
For a wonder all seventeen accounts were still live. They varied from a low near $700,000 to one more than a hundred times that .
All had been tapped at least once in the century and a half since being set up. Most
recently 40 years ago. So Rodriguez was still active, she guessed. Unless those were really ancestors and not him or an agent of his.
The passwords had never been changed. They weren’t easy to guess but she remembered the key to them and accessed them easily.
Then she spun her ergo chair and got up for coffee.
“You want something?”
“Cappuccino. Chocolate spritz.” He was engrossed in his screen. A few minutes he took the cup without looking away from his work. He grunted thanks.
She wasn’t offended. She understood him.
·
A week later Bethany had worked through the honesty issues to her satisfaction and was ready to lay claim to one of the funds.
For that she had constructed an identity of her own using techniques she’d learned at C&R. This included a fake driver’s license modeled closely on her own. The address was legitimate, the picture similar to her real features but aged a dozen years.
She arrived at the Grossbender et Cie Bank in Beverly Hills in a taxi. Entering the bank she looked around and located a customer service desk. She approached it. The young man in a severely business-like suit looked up her.
“May I help you, Madame?” He had a faint accent she took to be German, possibly fake.
She took the chair in front of his desk.
“Yes. I was recently informed I’m the recipient of a trust fund. I’d like to open it. I’d also like to engage an officer of the bank to manage it. If I feel he or she and I are compatible. ”
“Very well. I’ll need to see some identification. And the details of the trust.”
“I only have a personal letter sent from Australia about the details. Here is my driver’s license.” She’d sent the letter in Australia so that anyone checking postmarks would see that they were authentic.
She handed over the envelope and license she’d faked a week before, checking it and the license out with C&R’s stringent tools. They should hold up to those the bank used.
The young man, Albert Schlesinger according to his name plate, took them and began doing something on his computer screen. In a few minutes he began humming very low in a satisfied way.
